My AI skeptic friends are all nuts • Hacker News Board

Re: My AI skeptic friends are all nuts

#141

Post by therealmarv » Mon, Jun 02, 2025, 10:00 PM UTC

timr wrote: post #121

As someone who has spent the better part of today fixing the utter garbage produced by repeated iteration with these supposedly magical coding agents, I'm neither in the camp of the "AI skeptic" (at least as defined by the author), nor am I in the camp of people who thinks these things can "write a large fraction of all the tedious code you’ll ever need to write." Maybe I'm doing it wrong, but I seem to have settled…

Results can vary significantly, and in my experience, both the choice of tools and models makes a big difference.

It’s a good idea to periodically revisit and re-evaluate AI and tooling. I’ve noticed that many programmers tried AI when, for example, GPT-3.5 was first released, became frustrated, and never gave it another chance—even though newer models like o4-mini are now capable of much more, especially in programming tasks.

AI is advancing rapidly. With the latest models and the right tools, what’s possible today far exceeds what was possible even just a short time ago (3-12 months ago even).

Take a look at Cursor or Windsurf or Roo code or aider to "feed" AI with code and take a look at models like Google Gemini 2.5 Pro, Claude Sonnet 4, OpenAI o4mini. Also educate yourself about agents and MCP. Soon that will be standard for many/every programmer.

Re: My AI skeptic friends are all nuts

#142

Post by artursapek » Mon, Jun 02, 2025, 10:00 PM UTC

timr wrote: post #121

As someone who has spent the better part of today fixing the utter garbage produced by repeated iteration with these supposedly magical coding agents, I'm neither in the camp of the "AI skeptic" (at least as defined by the author), nor am I in the camp of people who thinks these things can "write a large fraction of all the tedious code you’ll ever need to write." Maybe I'm doing it wrong, but I seem to have settled…

Which model? Are you having it write unit tests first? How large of a change at a time are you asking for? How specific are your prompts?

Re: My AI skeptic friends are all nuts

#143

Post by wordofx » Mon, Jun 02, 2025, 10:00 PM UTC

timr wrote: post #121

As someone who has spent the better part of today fixing the utter garbage produced by repeated iteration with these supposedly magical coding agents, I'm neither in the camp of the "AI skeptic" (at least as defined by the author), nor am I in the camp of people who thinks these things can "write a large fraction of all the tedious code you’ll ever need to write." Maybe I'm doing it wrong, but I seem to have settled…

[flagged]

Re: My AI skeptic friends are all nuts

#144

Post by rafavento » Mon, Jun 02, 2025, 10:01 PM UTC

There's something that seems to be missing in all these posts and that aligns with my personal experience trying to use AI coding assistants.

I think in code.

To me, having to translate the into natural language for the LLM to translate it back into code makes very little sense.

Am I alone in this camp? What am I missing?

Re: My AI skeptic friends are all nuts

#145

Post by davidclark » Mon, Jun 02, 2025, 10:01 PM UTC

>If you were trying and failing to use an LLM for code 6 months ago †, you’re not doing what most serious LLM-assisted coders are doing.

Here’s the thing from the skeptic perspective: This statement keeps getting made on a rolling basis. 6 months ago if I wasn’t using the life-changing, newest LLM at the time, I was also doing it wrong and being a luddite.

It creates a never ending treadmill of boy-who-cried-LLM. Why should I believe anything outlined in the article is transformative now when all the same vague claims about productivity increases were being made about the LLMs from 6 months ago which we now all agree are bad?

I don’t really know what would actually unseat this epistemic prior at this point for me.

In six months, I predict the author will again think the LLM products of 6 month ago (now) were actually not very useful and didn’t live up to the hype.

Re: My AI skeptic friends are all nuts

#146

Post by mgraczyk » Mon, Jun 02, 2025, 10:01 PM UTC

pie_flavor wrote: post #46

I have one very specific retort to the 'you are still responsible' point. High school kids write lots of notes. The notes frequently never get read, but the performance is worse without them: the act of writing them embeds them into your head. I allegedly know how to use a debugger, but I haven't in years: but for a number I could count on my fingers, nearly every bug report I have gotten I know exactly down to the l…

The important thing you are missing is that the learning landscape has now changed.

You are now responsible for learning how to use LLMs well. If an untrained vibe coder is more productive for me, while knowing nothing about how the code actually works, I will hire the vibe coder instead of you.

Learning is important, but it's most important that you learn how to use the best tools available so you can be productive. LLMs are not going away and they will only get better, so today that means you are responsible for learning how to use them, and that is already more important for most many roles than learning how to code yourself.

Re: My AI skeptic friends are all nuts

#147

Post by ezst » Mon, Jun 02, 2025, 10:03 PM UTC

leoh wrote: post #37

>but it’s bad at rust I have to say, my ability to learn Rust was massively accelerated via LLMs. I highly recommend them for learning a new skill. I feel I'm roughly at the point (largely sans LLMs) now where I can be nearly as productive in Rust as Python. +1 to RustRover as well, which I strongly prefer to any other IDE.

How much of that proficiency remains once you switch it off?

Re: My AI skeptic friends are all nuts

#148

Post by zaptrem » Mon, Jun 02, 2025, 10:03 PM UTC

timr wrote: post #121

As someone who has spent the better part of today fixing the utter garbage produced by repeated iteration with these supposedly magical coding agents, I'm neither in the camp of the "AI skeptic" (at least as defined by the author), nor am I in the camp of people who thinks these things can "write a large fraction of all the tedious code you’ll ever need to write." Maybe I'm doing it wrong, but I seem to have settled…

Even on stuff it has no chance of doing on its own, I find it useful to basically git reset repeatedly and start with more and more specific instructions. At the very least it helps me think through my plan better.

Re: My AI skeptic friends are all nuts

#149

Post by hn_throwaway_99 » Mon, Jun 02, 2025, 10:03 PM UTC

I felt this article was a lot of strawman-ing.

Yes, there are people who think LLMs are just a fad, just like NFTs, and I agree these people are not really serious and that they are wrong. I think anyone who has used an AI coding agent recently knows that they are highly capable and can enhance productivity in the right hands.

But, as someone who gets a lot of value in AI coding agents, my issue is not with gen AI as a productivity enhancing tool - it's with the absolute torrent of BS about how AI is soon going to make coders obsolete, and the way AI has been shoved onto many engineering teams is like yet another incarnation of the latest management fad. My specific arguments:

1. As the author pretty much acknowledges, AI agents still basically suck at large, system-wide "thinking" and changes. And the way they work with their general "guess and check" method means they can churn out code that is kinda sorta right, but often leaves huge holes or outright laughable bugs.

2. Hallucinations are the worst possible failure modes - they look correct, which makes it all the more difficult to determine they're actually bullshit. I shudder to think about who will need to maintain the mountains of "vibe code" that is now being generated. Certainly not fucking me; I had a good career but I think now is definitely the right time to peace out.

3. Even if I could totally agree that there is a strong business case for AI, I can still, as an individual, think it makes my job generally shittier, and there is nothing wrong with having that opinion.

I don't think I'd be so anti-AI if I saw a rational, cautious debate about how it can enhance productivity. But all I see are folks with a vested interest overselling its capabilities and minimizing its downsides, and it just feels really tiresome.

Re: My AI skeptic friends are all nuts

#150

Post by yodsanklai » Mon, Jun 02, 2025, 10:03 PM UTC

timr wrote: post #121

As someone who has spent the better part of today fixing the utter garbage produced by repeated iteration with these supposedly magical coding agents, I'm neither in the camp of the "AI skeptic" (at least as defined by the author), nor am I in the camp of people who thinks these things can "write a large fraction of all the tedious code you’ll ever need to write." Maybe I'm doing it wrong, but I seem to have settled…

My workflow is similar. While the agent is running, I browse the web or day dream. If I'm lucky, the agent produced correct code (after possibly several cycles). If I'm not, I need to rewrite everything myself. I'm also not in any camp and I genuinely don't know if I'm more or less productive overall. But I think that a disciplined use of a well-integrated agent will make people more productive.